Swedish Formula 3 1976

With Conny Andersson having moved to the works March F3 team for 1977, Tore Helle recruited Tommy Borgudd and Eje Elgh to join Conny Ljungfeldt in his Rotel team. Helle also commissioned Len Terry to build a new car, named the Viking TH1A, which proved too ambitious and too complex for such a small team. The car showed great promise, Ljungfeldt winning his heat and running second in the final at Monte Carlo before a front upright broke, but Helle's money ran and the team disbanded. Ljungfeldt ran his car himself in Swedish races and did enough to retain his domestic F3 title.

Apart from the Vikings, the other new cars in Sweden in 1976 were almost all Ralt RT1s. Ulf Svensson, Erkki Salminen, Claes Sigurdsson and Häkan Alriksson all had early orders for Ron Tauranac's 1976 version of the F3 Ralt, and these cars would make up a signiifcant proportion of Swedish grids over the next few seasons. There were also an indeterminate number of Van Diemen 376s, the British Formula Ford maker having bought up the rights to the popular GRD F3 car. The Vikings and Ralts used Novamotor Toyota engines, as did the recent Marches, but there were still a lot of Ford twin cams on the back half of the grid.

Swedish Formel 1600

Alongside the main F3 championship, the Stockholms Sportvagnsklubb (SSK) organised a series with catered for older F3 cars, as well as Formula Super Vee and Formula Ford. Many of the leading drivers were using the same cars they used in the F3 series, so must have had full 2-litre engines, but other cars may still have had their pre-74 1600cc engines.

The research

The data for all Swedish races derive from the archives of Joran Hedberg, one of Anders Olofsson's helpers in
the mid 1970s, who was generous enough to donate them to Chris Townsend when he retired from racing history to
concentrate on recording athletics events. These data have been corroborated, where possible, with press reports
in a wide variety of European magazines and manufacturers' records and extended through use of entry lists posted
on svenskracing.se.

Please get in touch if you have any F3 entry lists, programs or
official results hand-outs.